Apple has quietly changed its guidelines on the pricing of In-App Subscriptions on the App Store. There are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the “same price or less than it is offered outside the app”. There are no longer any guidelines about price at all. Apple also removed the requirement that external subscriptions must be also offered as an in-app purchase.

This is actually a pretty big deal because it means:

Netflix can continue to operate as they are without adding a method of subscribing in-app.

If they wanted, a service could charge a premium to cover Apple’s 30% when selling things through the app store versus their online offering.

I am pretty sure this means that Amazon can keep the Kindle app the way it is — they may just need to remove the link to the online Kindle store from the app. Though I am not 100% on this just yet.

Big stuff and a welcome change I am sure, by both consumers and developers.